Setting Up a Meal time Routine
You only have to manage a home for a couple of days before you realize that everything revolves around meals. So brush that thought off and then set them up to work for your family and you’re golden.
Does your family have a family meal time routine?
If you don’t already try and make it a point to eat dinner as a family at least once a day. For our family that time is dinner. My husband leaves for work before the sun rises and as much as I would love to make his breakfast fresh each day, well that just doesn’t happen. So we try to eat dinner together every night of the week. And have a Mealtime Routine for those times.
What is a Mealtime Routine?
Your Mealtime Routine are all the things you set in place to get dinner on the table. It also includes rounding up the masses. Having a great family dinner and a great dinner cleanup.
Setting up Your Mealtime Routine
A Mealtime Routine starts with planning your meals.
Use a weekly meal planning sheet and create a plan of what will be on the menu for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Start with planning one week at at time and work up to one month at a time.
Enlist the masses. If you have older children in the family you can prepare some of the dishes in advance so that they can contribute to the family meal by heating up the dinner or even cooking it in all themselves. Younger children can cook along with you which is another nice addition to the family meal time routine.
Share the mealtime prep chores. Next give everyone in the family a chore related to the meal. Young children can set and/or clear the table. Older children can prepare parts of the meal or wash the dishes. Giving everyone a part lets them know they are an important addition to the family meal time.
Don’t leave menu planning to the moment for dinner. If you need some help getting your days organized so you are not frazzled at dinnertime I recommend Crystal Paine’s two courses Make Over Your Mornings and Make Over Your Evenings.
It may take some time to get into the rhythm of things but a family meal time routine will bring the family together and make meal times a pleasant bonding activity you look forward to each day.
This is wonderful! I wish I had seen something like this when all of my kids still lived at home.
No routine here, never know when the husband will be home. Could be 6pm (but very unlikely) could be 9pm.
When life was more hectic the meal plan really worked. Helped with the budget too. However it was like exercising. As soon as something came up or someone else decided to cook, the plan went to the way side. Kudos to all who have the discipline to stick with it.
We’re definitely working on our meal time routine. I have a 3 year old and it a little rough right now. It will be nice once the routine is just another habit.